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As David Horowitz would be quick to remind you, academics tend to skew to the left in their political outlook relative to the general population. I am no exception. Like so many of my colleagues, I have followed Barack Obama’s presidential campaign with interest and excitement. South Carolina had an early primary this year, and nearly all of the major candidates came to speak at Clemson University, where I teach.

Bell Curve author Charles Murray takes direct aim at higher education in his new book Real Education by asserting that we are wasting our time trying to educate too many people. Murray contends that only 10 to 20 percent of those enrolled in four-year degree programs should actually be there. His pessimistic view of people’s ability to learn ignores not just good evidence to the contrary but the real pressures the American economy is facing.

With the enactment of a new GI Bill, the time has come to once again recall former University of Chicago President Robert Maynard Hutchins' prediction that the original 1944 legislation benefiting World War II soldiers would convert colleges and universities into "educational hobo jungles." Perhaps it's unfair -- Hutchins, a veteran himself, was a noted legal scholar and philosopher whose influence on the university he led is still quite visible today. But that's the price you pay for being so spectacularly (and quotably) wrong about one of the great policy issues of our time.